Red
by Yellow Mask
Summary: Many things were red. Flames, blood...and Riza's eyes. Royai oneshot.


**Red **

**By Yellow Mask**

**Spoilers:** The episode where Riza's hit with a stone, and Hughes's death.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own FMA.

**oooooooo  
**

Roy Mustang both loved and hated the colour red. Red meant his fire, his death-dealing flames. Red meant blood, meant injury…red fluid had covered the phone box where Hughes had been murdered.

But red also meant Riza. Red meant her eyes.

He'd never seen anyone else with red eyes. He'd seen Ishbalans with crimson irises, but never anyone from Amestris. He wondered, sometimes, what genetic quirk had given her such a unique coloration – hair like spun sunlight, skin like alabaster…and eyes like roses. Not the pink roses that grew in a grandmother's hedge, but the deep, rich scarlet of Valentine's Day flowers.

Not even that. Rose-red didn't quite describe it. He wouldn't call her eyes blood-red either, it wasn't deep enough.

Rubies. Riza's eyes were like rubies. He'd alchemised a ruby once, just to see if he could. It had been years ago but Roy still remembered the glittering red stone. But a single stone hardly covered the depths in her eyes, her irises like a red ocean.

But that was it. Riza's eyes were an ocean, an ocean of rubies. That deep, shining red.

**oooooooo**

Blood was red. Especially so against her pale skin. The wound had stopped bleeding, and there was only a scab of dried blood to mark where the stone had struck her. It probably didn't even sting anymore.

It still made him deeply uncomfortable. He found his eyes straying to it almost constantly on the journey back, found himself wondering if it was deep enough to need stitches and which doctor she would go to if she did need them.

And, truth be told, he had been feeling a little guilty. He'd been rather callous, sharply commanding Riza to 'cover him' after she'd just been stoned. But the sight of the blood on her forehead had nearly sent his heart leaping through his nostrils.

Frankly, Roy had been close to panicking, until he'd drawn level with her and seen that it was just a glancing blow, with no permanent damage done.

And on the train ride back to Central, he couldn't stop staring at her forehead. Couldn't stop remembering the flash of bright red as her blood hit the naked air.

**oooooooo**

No more blood, only tight black fibre that held the cut closed, flesh to flesh.

She did need stitches. He'd known it, had insisted on taking her to the doctor himself, under the excuse that she might have a concussion and needed someone to watch her. He knew she didn't buy it, but felt grateful she allowed him to come with her anyway.

Standing outside her front door, in the softly falling snow, he noticed her lips were red.

That was unusual. Normally they were off-pink, just slighter more rosy than the skin surrounding them. But the dropping temperature had conspired to make the tip of her nose scarlet, had dusted crimson lightly across her cheeks, and had tinged her lips a bright, cherry red.

He looked at her lips, noted how red they were…and found himself quite unable to look away.

Slowly, his eyes had risen to meet hers, onyx and ruby locking for the space of a second. And in that second, he'd seen in her eyes the answer to a question he'd never had the strength to voice aloud.

He never knew who moved first. One moment, they were gazing at each other, as still as ice sculptures in the snow, and the next, they were kissing.

One arm was at the small of her back, the other at the nape of her neck. Her arms were in almost identical positions around him, an unconscious mirror image. He didn't know who was reflecting who – like two mirrors placed opposite each other, each reflecting the other, reflecting the other, reflecting the other…and so on into infinity.

Riza didn't melt into his kiss, didn't sag in his arms and let him take over. She was as much in charge of the kiss as he was, she held onto him as tightly as he held her. He may have been her superior, but Riza was his equal in every way that truly mattered.

They drew apart. They paused for perhaps a heartbeat or two, long enough for another exchange of soul-searching gazes, long enough for another silent affirmation before they came together again, closer than before, though that hadn't seemed possible. So close Roy wondered if they were sinking into each other's souls.

Roy knew there would be consequences for what they did. But kissing Riza's red lips and looking into the shining rubies of her eyes, he found he didn't care.

**End.**


End file.
